The Missional Leader

What am I reading? I am posting short synopsis of what I am reading. I will not be critiquing, for that is for you to do after you engage the material for yourself.

The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World

Bibliographic Citation
Roxburgh, Alan J. and Fred Romanuk. The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World. San Francisco: Josey-Bass, 2006.

“Missional leadership is the key—but how do we do it?” Roxburgh and Romanuk begin by identifying six critical issues for helping churches transition into a missional mindset. The other five are: most models repackage old paradigms, discontinuous change is the new norm, congregations still matter, leaders need new capacities and frameworks, and that a congregation is a unique organization. They go on to address organizational behavior and characteristics, helping the leader/pastor embrace the instability of change and the uncertainty that comes with a cultural shift. With the explanation of “The Missional Change Model” the authors explore the “how tos” of the transition. The steps are: awareness, understanding, evaluate, experiment, commitment. Each step builds upon the previous to systematically and skillfully effect change within a congregation. Not only focusing upon the congregation, Roxburgh and Romanuk are careful to also focus upon the internal fortitude and characteristics of the leader who will implement missional change. They discuss personal maturity which includes “being present to oneself and others,” “being authentic,” and “being self-aware.” Additionally they take on the issue of “personal courage” as a determining factor since change always involves stress, conflict and difficulty. Lastly they answer the question that began the conversation, “how do we do it?” With a careful exposition of how to embrace and become a missional leader they provide tools and methodology for personal growth and development.

Emerging Churches

What am I reading? I am posting short synopsis of what I am reading. I will not be critiquing, for that is for you to do after you engage the material for yourself.

Emerging Churches: creating Christian community in postmodern cultures

Bibliographic Citation
Gibbs, Eddie and Ryan K. Bolger. Emerging Churches: creating Christian community in postmodern cultures. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2005.

The culture is changing. According to authors Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger, there are six essential cultural changes that are causing the marginalization of the church:
1. Shift from modernity to post-modernity.
2. Shift from westernization to globalization.
3. Communication revoloution featuring a shift from print media to electronic media/cyber communication.
4. Economic revolution with a shift from industrialization to an information based economy.
5. Breakthroughs in health and biology creating a myriad of ethical dilemmas.
6. The convergence of science and religion.
With the onset of Generation X & Y’s “emancipation of self” they are coming of age and realize that the like Jesus, “Jesus is not the problem. It is the church they dislike, because they do not readily see the church living out his [Jesus] teachings.” They go on to observe that, “In postmodern cultures of the twenty-first century, a linear or text-based ecclesiology perpetuates secularity in the church and denies the church’s call to live incarnationally.” The ecclesial shifts that will facilitate the church living incarnationally include a shift from systematic to non-linear methodology, from elitist cultural disconnect to engagement with visual culture, an embracing of both transcendence and immanence of God, and an intentional incarnational engagement with the wider culture. Lastly, the creation of Christian community in postmodern cultures requires six practices (each with a featured chapter): welcoming the stranger, serving with generosity, participating as producers, creating as created beings, leading as a body and taking part in spiritual activities.

Unanticipated Consequences

I received word today that another annual conference is divesting from conference level youth ministry. They insist that the congregations will pick up the slack and that if it is a priority for local churches they will do what needs to be done. I have three primary concerns with such a divestiture. First, we are essentially “cashing in” our long term investments for short term savings. Secondly, we are living out one of the primary complaints I hear from young adults, a contradiction of spoken and lived values. Finally, we are saying to the next generation, you are not nearly as important as we were when we were your age. These are dangerous, and I believe eventually disastrous precedents to set that are sowing the seeds of an eventual demise of my beloved United Methodist Church.

When I was younger I began investing in my retirement plan. There are times when I could have really used those extra resources to help feed my family, pay tuition or just make ends meet but I still had it withdrawn from my income and place securely in long-term investments. It has been tempting to move my retirement to shorter term, potentially higher yielding investments but since I am for the long hall (another 25+ years I hope) it is wiser to ride out the trends and fluctuations in the markets.

In the United Methodist Church I am consistently seeing staff person after staff person in every level of the Church get the word that their position in youth and young adult ministry is being merged, refocused or simply eliminated. I have just seen an interesting graph by Craig Miller that shows that in the age group 40-69 we are approximately even with the US population but with those 18-39 we are well behind the population trends. I grew up with well staffed, well funded youth ministry (I’m 43) that will soon be a thing of the past. We have yielded to the “day trading” nature of our culture wanting microwave results. We are abandoning the long-term investment that is youth and young adult ministry and using the funds to prop up ailing programs, support special initiatives and finance the “flavor of the month” programs that we hope will fill our churches and our offering plates. What will this divestment yield? In twenty years, if trends continue, our churches will be coffee shops and pubs like they are in England and Australia. Perhaps those institutions will invest for the long-term.

Secondly, we are living out a contradiction of spoken and lived values. Every decision is a theological decision. Our words are filled with admonitions about the importance of youth and young adults. Our actions are saying that what is really important is the maintenance of the institution. We clamor to establish an Division of Ministry with Young People but do not fund it adequately to make a significant impact. We support vocal resolutions and cut positions. We turn youth ministry into a revenue stream rather than a place for investment in the future.

If there is one thing that young adults abhor, it is inconsistency between spoke and lived values. I have written about this before, but this blatant disregard is almost unfathomable. If we want to insure that the youth of today will not be United Methodist, then lets eliminate United Methodist centered youth ministry.

Now to respond to the argument that the “churches will fill in the gap if it is valuable to them.” This is absurd. Churches tend to follow the leadership of the Conference. If the bishop says its important, then it is important. The old adage still stands, “what gets measured, gets done.” The opposite is also true, what gets ignored gets eliminated. While it is true that some churches, especially those that are large and well-funded will continue to do significant ministry with you and young adults, most of our United Methodist Churches are not large or well-funded. Most struggle to pay their pastor, keep the lights on and do vital ministry in their community. Their youth leaders are part-time or volunteers who have a heart for ministry but maybe not the training and resources needed. Conference level youth and young adult ministry provides events that encourage young people and shows them that there are other faithful followers of Christ in the UMC connections. Conference ministry provides training that is affordable and accessible to those with heart that need help. Let us not fall victim to claiming that ministry with young people is important to us in one breath and eliminating it in another.

Lastly, and perhaps hardest for me understand, is why the Boomers who are making these decisions can do so when they grew up in the age of explosive youth ministry? They are essentially saying to they youth and young adults of today that they are unimportant and that other “missional priorities take precedent” to them. These men and women who grew up around camp fires de-fund camp ministry. Those who answered their call to ministry in a Wesley Foundation gathering or college chapel are advocating eliminating the line items that fund campus ministry and telling the directors to find “alternative revenue streams.” Those who gathered crossed arms with their friends and prayed the prayer of dismissal are now performing the benediction on youth and young adult ministry by draining its funding and eliminating those who would speak boldly and work tirelessly to reach the next generation.

What shall we do? I have a few suggestions (for those of you who read me often you not be surprised)…
1) Challenged your annual conference to expand your youth and young adult ministry, especially those events and training that will benefit small and mid-sized churches.
2) Support your staff person who works in these areas with your prayers, your presences as a volunteer, even if its just to stuff envelopes and make nametags, and your gifts. Provide funds directly to sponsor youth who may not be able to afford to attend events.
3) Send your United Methodist youth to United Methodist camps, youth events and activities. Help them begin to realized the power of the connections and buy into to being a part of our Church for the long-term.
4) Advocate with General Conference, Jurisdictional Conference and Annual Conference members and delegates to support youth and young adult ministry with connectional funding. After working in the connection for several years I have come to realize that there is money for whatever is deemed “vital and urgent.” If this need, that goes to the very existence of our denomination, is not “vital and urgent” then I do not know what is!

I am employed at the offices of the Southeastern Jurisdiction and am not even sure that at the end of July when our Jurisdictional Conference meets if I will have a job, but that is not why I advocate for youth and young adults. I advocate because I was a youth from a broken home that was sent by my church to camp and there, beside the popping of a roaring fire, got on my knees and bowed my head and received Christ as my Savior. I was the kid in who discovered my identity in Christ at my weekly youth group lead by good-hearted volunteers and made life changing decisions and youth events. I am the adult worker who has seen my children mature because they spend a week with other United Methodist youth getting to know Christ and each other building relationships that will last for eternity. I will, with my last breath, call for our church to reach the emerging generation no matter where they are or who they are because another generation did the same for me. I remain:

Consumed by the Call,
Marty
Gracious God, who seeks the least, the last and the lost to lead the Kingdom of God, let the voice of Your Church cry out in unison to change the world, one young person at a time. Amen

Indigenous Jesus:
What An Emerging Community
Looks Like

What would a truly indigenous community look like? If I were to list a few essential components they would be:

1. The Arts! This is a generation of expression. Art speaks to the heart of who they are. One of this generation’s artistic heroes is Banksy, a mysterious graffiti artist from London. http://www.banksy.co.uk/. His art is more than images; it is filled with meaning, metaphor and messages that connect with the people that encounter it. Our modernist culture has reduced art to entertainment when it is so much more. Art is a prophetic expression of life. It is commentary and criticism with a paintbrush or on stage. Art is a spiritual encounter with reality.
When I do this type of worship I invite local artists, Christian and pre-Christian, to express the theme in visual arts (painting, sculpture, etc) or dramatic arts as part of the worship service. Rather than trying to copy the culture, real art creates culture. So much of “Christian art” is simply a sanctified copy of what secular artists are doing. We do not need to be afraid of letting the art speak for itself rather than trying to interpret it. An emerging community of Christ followers would be filled with art that caused people to pause and struggle with life, purpose and passion and invite them to see Christ in the struggle.

2. Mystery! So do you want the red pill or the blue pill (if you don't get that, watch The Matrix). This generation believes that the real world is hidden from them and they are willing to embrace the divine mystery far beyond their pragmatic Boomer parents. They know that everything can't be explained by the scientific method and they crave the sacramental embrace of the Savior. They do not shrink from the unexplainable. They know that the four simple rules of life do not come anywhere close to explaining the complexities of existing in the twenty-first century.
Worship that embraces mystery includes both powerful, sensory filled music and times of silence. It values the proclamation of the scripture, but allows times for lectio divina, the simple reading and hearing of the text without anything added or taken away. The emerging community will gather around the table of God to receive the sacrament, knowing that what happens in them and to them is beyond simplistic explanation. An emerging community of Christ followers would embrace and live with mystery.

3. Conversation! Conversation (blogs, discussion boards, coffee houses) are the heartbeat of spiritual discovery for this generation. Venues allowing them to receive solid teaching and then interact with it as to how they embody the gospel are essential. This is a generation unafraid of the deep teachings of scripture. They want to wrestle with the difficult texts and discover the deeper truths. They crave to live in a community where life can be lived together. They want to discuss their discoveries, hear the stories that mold other Christ followers, and find their points of intersection and points of contradiction. An emerging community of Christ would be open to engage in conversations of life, love and the difficulties of life.

4 Ritual! This generation craves to tap into something ancient with roots. Their lives are filled with disposable philosophies and short-term realities. They seek a deeper life and desire the experience of something that has lasted through the ages. There is even a kind of resurgence of postmodern monasticism (ie. Shane Claiborne) that has sprung up and become very popular. This is a generation that is ready to fully embrace ancient rituals if it they are well explained and clearly taught. An emerging community of Christ followers would embrace ritual as part of their ongoing spiritual journey.

5. Mission! This generation would rather make a difference than make a dollar. They throw themselves into their commitments with abandon. They want to change the world, they want to feed children with AIDS in Africa, find racial reconciliation in their communities and solve the problem of poverty. They are moving into marginal neighborhoods and staking a claim for justice. An emerging community of Christ followers would find ways to change their community and the world with their resources, time and talents.

In my dream world, were I to be given another chance to plant another church (my last one was cool, hip, emerging and not financially viable...lol) I would consider a private/public partnership by starting a fair trade (social justice) coffee house that hosts artists and Christian conversation and also hosted worship every Saturday evening and Sunday morning. The coffee shop could cover operating expenses and the congregation would be free to pour their resources, time and talents into mission. See http://www.cravestl.org/ as an example.

Emerging Worship: A Meandering Email

So, I have gotten lots of response from my article, "Why We Are Losing Ground..." One of the emails I received was from a pastor who is committed to reaching this generation and asked for my thoughts. Below you will find the email I sent him. I hope it helps you think about things in a whole new way as well. If nothing else, there is a great reading list at the bottom!

Jim,

The good news that you realize you don't know everything. The biggest obstacle I run into is the "it worked before" syndrome of successful pastors. The willingness to engage in a completely new visioning process is a healthy place to be.

Secondly, if you have "googled" me you realize my strong evangelical commitments. I hope you don't think I was advocating abandoning Scripture an any form. I am a strong Wesleyan believing in the primacy of Scripture. But I also am committed to social action, for as Wesley observed, you can't hear gospel if your stomach is growling (that the Marty version of course).

I might suggest you gather those committed young adults and spend 6 weeks working through the Catalyst Groupzine on Culture (http://www.catalystspace.com/resources/groupzines.aspx). It has some serious discussion and reflection questions. You might also visit Mars Hill Church (Rob Bell) or Imageo Dei Church in Seattle to see how some pastors are connecting with their indigenous young adults.

In my dream world, were I to be given another chance to plant another church (my last one was cool, hip, emerging and not financially viable...lol) I would consider a private/public partnership by starting a fair trade (social justice) coffee house that hosts artists and Christian conversation and also hosted worship every Saturday evening and Sunday morning. The coffee shop could cover operating expenses and the congregation would be free to pour their time and talents into mission.

These are the meanderings of a would be post-modern prophet with a heart for evangelism and mission. I hope I answered some of your questions. I included a reading list below that will be far more helpful that my above comments. I'd be happy to come and help you engage a visioning process if you like. Until we meet, I remain:


Consumed by the Call,

Reverend Marty J. Cauley, Director

Some suggested reading:

Kimbrall, Dan. Emerging Worship

Kimbrall, Dan. They Love Jesus but Don't Like the Church

Cunningham, Sarah. Dear Church: Letters from a Disillusioned Generation

Kinnaman, David and Gabe Lyons. UnChristian.

Frost, Michael and Alan Hirsch. The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century.
Hendrickson, 2003.

Gruder, Darell L. The Continuing Conversion of the Church. Eerdmans, 2000.

Hirsch, Alan. The ForgottenWays: Reactivating the Missional Church. Brazos Press, 2006.

Roxburgh, Alan J. and Fred Romanuk. The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World.
Jossey-Bass, 2004.

Setzer, Ed. Planting Missional Churches. B&H Publishing Group, 2006.

Nobody Really Has It Together...

Nobody really has it together. There are a lot of us who kind of pretend we have it together. Who have a nice façade of “togetherness” but some where there is a soft spot, a problem or a life difficulty that isn’t really all together.

I have often taught what I call the storm principle. The storm principle states that everyone is in one of three places in their life. They are either in the middle of a storm, just finally coming out of a storm or in that brief calm before the storm. A lot of our storms are not even of our own making, they are the result of other’s actions that impact our life. The storm is always nearby, so if you are in the calm place, enjoy it while you can.

This brings us back to the statement above about nobody really having it together. I guess a truer statement is that at any giving time everything that you have together can fall apart. The law of entropy takes over and things really do tend to move to a state of disorder. I know of not less than three competent, capable and respected professionals that in the past couple of weeks have been told, for no apparent reason, that they were being laid off. These are not the people that that kind of thing happens to. These are the “go to” people who come early, stay late, and go above and beyond. These are the people that their coworkers turn to in times of difficulty and trouble, but decisions above their pay grade were made to eliminate them from their respective organizations. They thought they had it all together and it fell apart. The storm came, seemingly out of the blue, and it hit hard.

Others of us have been asked to endure the storm a little longer, or indefinitely. We discussed opportunities and options that never occurred. Our ability to trust has been diminished and we feel like we are forgotten or at least taken for granted. Our storm is not one of crashing waves and lightening, but one of being stranded in the middle of an endless ocean with no breeze in our sails and no pull upon our lives. It is a storm of deafening calm, of waveless waiting and of mirages on the horizon that turn out to be nothing more than hopeful figments of our imagination. So you sit and pray for a breeze, a direction, a destination.

I used to think I knew people who had it together. Who never faltered, who never doubted or who never struggled. But, eventually, even they had a storm that, at least for awhile, overtook them. They to were caught unaware and unready for the unexpected blow from the storms of life. Nobody really has it all together.

We travelers in the storm, what do we do? How do we continue when the skies are dark and the rain is cold? Today I do not have words of encouragement, I only have words of the one who promised to be a light into a dark world. Today I am looking for the light and hoping that the light I see is not a train at the other end of the tunnel. I remain…

In the Storm,
Marty Cauley

Gracious God who comes to us in the storm, bring light into the darkness and peace into the midst of the storm. In the name of the One who endured a storm beyond compare, Jesus, I pray. Amen

The Problem with Theodicy

There is evil in the world. That much is true. I seriously doubts that anyone with any sense of reality would deny the presence, even the seeming omni-presence of evil in the world. Whether we call it original sin or the condition of the human heart yearning to please self over the common good, evil is present.

I have been struggling, however, with theodicy. Theodicy is the vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of evil in the world. Rather, the idea that eventually, God and good will win despite the incredible cruelty that this world dishes out. This is particularly true in light of the past several days. In the last ten days I have been utterly confused and jaded by the church vocationally, Danelle has failed to have her teaching contract renewed after three years of stellar reviews and evaluations, it seems that evil has won at every turn and today one of the back windows just fell off of the van. Its like its not enough that we have both experienced the equivalent of vocational rejection, we had to have some just plain old personal aggravation as a side dish. Yep, there is evil in the world and sometimes it is present in a window falling off.

So I have spent hours trying to figure this out. Trying to understand if there is some lesson that I should be getting or some profound message that is being sent. I have struggled with whether I have done something recently that has unleashed a torrent of evil in my families direction, though I know that is the perception of a flawed theology. None the less, you know you think it too when a bunch of stuff happens to you. I have asked, what have I done to deserve this? I have given my life over to helping others get closer to God, Danelle has given herself over to helping young people discover their passion and embrace their future. These are vocations that would seemingly be replete with opportunities for selfless giving and long hours but would provide abundant blessings, yet evil seems to beset us on every side.

I understand Lamentations and the lament Psalms when the writers spoke of the enemy surrounding them and prospering while all they had to eat were tears. I also know that the best lessons are the hardest learned, yet that does not diminish the pain of the present. I will just have to endure a little longer. I remain:

In the Desert,
Marty Cauley

Gracious God, I know that you are a Savior in the desert who leads His people through. Give us the strength to learn without becoming hardened and to grow without becoming jaded. In the name of the suffereing Saviour, Jesus. Amen.

Reformation is an Inside Job

The Church is at a crossroads. Maybe its time, every 500 years there is usually a major shift. There is a seismic change in understanding; an overturning of power and a restructuring of the world. Mainline denominations, whose foundations were laid during the fifteenth and sixteenth century, are starting to crack and crumble. They are all losing members to other churches, schisms and to the vast depths of unbelief. Maybe this will be the generation that sees another Reformation.
Reformation is an inside job. It begins from within. Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and Wesley knew the Church. It was part of their lives. They all had theological training. All but Calvin were ordained. They all sought to call the church back into vitality. Luther’s theses were a call to change. Wesley remained an Anglican priest until the day he died. They all sought to stimulate the church to action, to realize what was going on inside the church and around them in the culture and to do something about it.
There are several key points about those Reformations and the ones that are starting to form on the horizon of today’s church that need to be considered. First, they all broke with the past and innovated. Secondly, they were all solidly anchored in the text. Next, they sought to communicate to the culture using the vernacular. Additionally they believed that practical application of belief was essential. Also, they did not seek to abandon tradition and they had a thorough understanding of historical theology. Lastly, they embraced the sacrament as transformative mystery.
The past is comforting. We understand the patterns and expectations. Breaking with the past requires loosing the ties that bind us and drifting into the unknown. That is not nearly so comfortable. We must break with what is comfortable and expected and begin stretching and innovating. This is already happening with churches, some of them quite large, that refuse to tie themselves down with real estate and indebtedness. They devote their resources to mission, not maintenance. This kind of innovation makes the establishment uncomfortable. It seems unstable and irresponsible. To those who practice this radical faith, it is a call to fiscal freedom and mission availability.
The reformers went to the scripture for insight, courage and inspiration. They looked again at the ancient stories and read them with new passion. The emergent church is seeing scripture with fresh eyes as well. They are digging deep into the text and uncovering meanings usually hidden by commentaries and interpretation. The stories are coming alive all over again with fresh meaning that calls them to a deeper level of discipleship.
Translating the Bible into the vernacular was a radical idea for the reformers. Reading it in the vernacular during public worship was even more radical. They could not envision a day when most people have a couple of dust covered Bibles laying around unopened because the text was such a precious gift. What will it look like to communicate to a culture that virtually ignores the Church? I have often stood within sight of a downtown church and asked passersby where it was and they had no idea we were standing in its shadow. Emerging churches are struggling with how to communicate to the culture in ways they understand. They are re-discovering art and icons as means to communicate. The lines between sacred and secular are blurring with the realization that the segmented lives of modernity are hollow and empty. Communication is moving beyond words to become embodied into the entire life of the believer.
This brings to mind practical, life application. The reformers had clear expectations of how the believer should live. Calvin had fines for missing church. Wesley had class meetings to monitor lives of the faithful. Today’s churches on the edge also call their fellow travelers into lives of accountability and sacrifice. Some move into low-income neighborhoods to provide a Christian haven amidst the struggles and trials faced by underprivileged children. Others live lives of radical generosity, living on half of their income so that they can give the other half away, they dedicate their lives to AIDS orphans in Africa or volunteering at underperforming schools. Living out their faith becomes their life, it moves beyond a segmented hour on Sunday to being a lifestyle of obedience.
The touchstone for the last reformation that must not be forgotten was their grounding in tradition and historical theology. They did not forget the shoulders they stood upon. They had read Augustine, Benedict and Tertullian. They were familiar with the desert fathers and the mothers of the faith who had faced persecution and martyrdom. In pursuit of innovation and change, it is vital that the reformation occurring today does not neglect to learn from those who have gone before us, those who gave their lives for their beliefs. Today, beliefs are cheap. You can embrace any idea without worry of trial or tribulation. The coming reformation, like the ones before it, must dig its roots deep into the soil of tradition and historical theology so that it is not blown over by the wind of challenge.
For decades one of the major controversies of the Church was what happens during Eucharist. The controversies of the holy meal segmented and divided the Church, but no matter which side of the argument they stood, they did agree that something powerful happens through the Lord’s Supper. I have been amazed at the passion and faithfulness and the serious study and attention that is being give to the Eucharist by emerging churches. Many of them practice the sacrament weekly and include it as part of the functional lives of their congregations. Sacramental renewal is bedrock of the coming Reformations.
Will we benefit and thrive from these reformers calls to the church or will we enter into another era of divisiveness and division? Can we as the Church united around a common table, hear the Word proclaimed in the vernacular, change our lives to live out our faithful sacrifice while keeping our faith firmly rooted in the text and historical orthodoxy? I pray that God will use me to be part of these reformations so that the Church can, once again, reach a culture that it has abandoned.

Gracious God, who calls us to be all things to all people whereby some might be saved, use me to be your voice and vessel through the one who came that we might have life, Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen

Jenga and Church Change

I am not a Reformation minded theologian. As I am taking a class in Reformation era history, culture and theology, it occurs to me that change comes in the church world much like kids play Jenga. I used to think that Martin Luther came up with his 95 thesis in a vacuum or by some source of divine revelation. Then, when he nailed them to the door, they caused a tidal wave of change to sweep across the theological landscape. The more I read about the era, the more authors and sources I discover from the years before Luther and Calvin, the more I realize that they were just the linchpins to a change that began hundreds of years before they came on the scene.

When kids play Jenga, the pull wooden blocks from the bottom of a stack and place them carefully on top. As they continue to pull from the bottom, of course, the structure becomes unstable. Eventually, the instability of the structure becomes irreversible and it tumbles over in a loud crash. To the outsider it seems like the person who pulled the last piece was the one at fault for then collapse of the entire structure. However, everyone playing the game and removing pieces is really, equally at fault. So it is with change in the Church.

Just like Luther may have been the one who visibly pulled out the last block causing radical change in the pre-existing understanding of the Church, he was not the cause of the overall change. He was simply the one holding the last block. His ideas were informed by many others before him. Change in the church may often seem revolutionary when it has been, in actuality, evolutionary. The evolutionary nature of the change is not at a steady pace, rather it moves slowly forward and occasionally takes a lurch forward.

In local churches, like yours and mine, a similar truth prevails. It seems like change may not be coming. Change can be good or bad. Change can meet ecstatic growth or slow decline. From the outside it may seem that the change experienced by the Church is sudden, but a careful study unveils the previous groundwork that was laid prior to the radical outcomes. The blocks were being pulled out long before you or I arrived. We just get to be the one holding the last block.

What has this taught me? First, to be slow to take credit for the great things that are happening in the church I may be serving. Those great things had a history that probably pre-dates me and may even pre-date my predecessor. Secondly, not to escape accountability in anyway, but be careful not to accept all of the blame for everything that goes wrong. This is even harder for me. While I don’t have a problem not taking the credit, I tend to take all the blame. The troubles also have deep roots. Roots that, unless somebody takes the time to pull them out, will crop up again and again.

So, change is like Jenga, and like Jenga you have to play. So, go ahead and pull out another block, it could be the one that releases amazing, God-directed change! I remain:

Consumed by the Call,
Marty Cauley

Gracious God, who is the cause of all change and whose very word called forth creation, the greatest change that has ever existed, help me to be bold in following your call to lead and love as Jesus lived and loved. Amen

The Certainty of Uncertainty

I hate uncertainty. I don’t mean to say it makes me a bit uncomfortable, I mean that I hate uncertainty. Having been raised in aura of uncertainty by a single wage earning mother and absentee father bred in me the desire, actually the need, to find some place of certainty. When I was called into ministry God saw fit to use the United Methodist Church as my place of spiritual grounding. It is, essentially, the only denomination that guarantees every ordained pastor a place to serve. I thought I had finally found my place of certainty.

Now, again, I am living in uncertainty. I want to know what is next but I do not. My wife and I are standing in this place of being in the between times. We did not anticipate the level of uncertainty at this point in our lives. We had thought that I would serve where I serve, she would teach where she is teaching, but now all we have is uncertainty. She is having to reapply for her current position as it transitions to becoming “tenure track.” I am struggling with whether what I am doing fulfills my ordination vows to make disciples and serve the church through “service, Word, order and sacrament.” We have both been praying for God to give us clear direction about our life’s directions. I have been waiting on the burning bush, but so far all I have is uncertainty.

I know the spiritual lesson here is to trust God. I am personally eating my words for every time I have told that to somebody else. It is a lot easier to give that advice than it is to take it. It is a lot easier to sit in a place of certainty and security and encourage others to step out in faith and to live in the spiritual certainty that God has it all under control. Now I’m on the other side of the equation, putting all of my faith into trusting God and pushing aside the demons of uncertainty that keep whispering in my ear, I understand how tough it is to hang on and push through. How difficult it is to wait, watch and listen for God to speak in a still small voice the direction and call of the future. Yet still I wait, in uncertainty.

There are a few things of which I am certain, however. I am certain that God wants me to do a work that fulfills my call to lead in some part of the United Methodist Church through “service, Word, order and sacrament.” As I have finished another DMin class, studying American cultural issues and how they relate to the Church I am more convinced that the Church is the hope of the world. It is the place where there is a chance for the world to find redemption, both personally and corporately. It is uniquely positioned at the crossroads of the economic, political, cultural and spiritual spheres of influence an can marshal the people and resources to make an impact on problems like poverty, at least on some microcosmic scale.

I am certain that Danelle is called to continue working with young adults. The impact she makes through her classes, counsel and concern for their well-being grounds them during their difficult college years. She is a source for unconditional love and guidance in a sea of ambiguity and indifference. Her passion truly lies in giving herself to help others discover their life’s path.

Lastly, I am certain that these two callings were meant to compliment each other to further the Gospel. Not that we may be called to work together (which would be awesome) as much as we are called to assist each other in our own individual endeavors. Our work has often created a sort of synergy when we combine our talents. I know that God has brought us together for a reason and a purpose, and now we wait to figure out what that is.

I still hate uncertainty. Thanks be to God for the few things in life for which you can be certain. I remain:

Consumed by the Call,
Marty Cauley

Gracious God who walks with us through the valley and the shadow of death, be a lamp unto my path through this time of uncertainty. In the name of the one who is the Light of the world, Jesus, I pray. Amen.

Deserts and Burning Bushes

I went to a conference with some friends in early November and told them I was looking for a “burning bush.” That is to say I was seeking clarity about the future of ministry for me and a clear path to what God wanted me to do and be about. This, of course, comes from the story of Moses coming across a burning bush that was not consumed in the wilderness and God giving the reluctant prophet clear instructions about his ultimate task in life. Four different speakers during those two days mentioned burning bushes. It become such a recurrent theme that one of my friends looked and me and said, “you know I paid for this conference too.” The problem is that I’m still not sure how to get out of the desert.

I pulled out my Bible and backed up a bit, before the burning bush narrative and had a profound, if not disappointing realization or two. First, Moses spent a lot of years in the desert before his path was clearly laid before him. This was not very encouraging actually. Forty years is a long time to spend with sheep. When Moses left Egypt it wasn’t under the best of terms. Then he spent years of his life, having gone from a prince to an employee of his father in law, essentially doing what he needed to do to survive. I am pretty sure that during his time herding sheep and chasing off bears, he may not have been living ‘his best life now.’ He was doing what he needed to do to survive. He was, however, learning essential lessons about desert survival that he would not have known if he had stayed in Egypt. He was learning how to live as a nomad, rather than as a settler. Surely this lesson would prove invaluable when we would spend another forty years wondering around the desert.

Another thing I realized is that Moses wasn’t really looking for the bush when it found him. He was not praying to understand God’s will or to figure out how to invest his life to make a the biggest difference for the Kingdom, he was just going to work every day and doing his job. I have spent a lot of time trying to hear God, and all Moses, the preeminent leader of God’s people did, was “tend the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro.” We live in a culture that tells us to create opportunity. To “make things happen.” I like that idea, that I have the ability to make things happen. That I can make my plans and work out a strategic path in order to obtain a goal. I like seven habits of effective people and master planning my way to success, but so far it hasn’t worked for me. Every time I make a plan, it falls apart. Like the biblical author wrote, “there is a way that seems right to a man but that is foolishness.” Here is the amazing thing, the bush found him. Surely he had been by that area before, he had passed the Mount of Horeb many times and there was nothing extraordinary about it, but this time the bush was ablaze and not consumed. It seems to have been a confluence of timing, training and Moses ability to hear the call. The timing was right for God to lead the people out of Egypt, Moses had learned what he needed to learn from his desert experience and now had the ability to hear the call of God. Waiting on divine confluence is extremely frustrating. God does not work in accordance with our Daytimers, rather God’s time is perfect and call is sure.

Thirdly, when God gave Moses the instructions, he wasn’t all that excited about them. How many times have I benignly prayed, “God, if you will show me what to do, I will do it”? Really? If you spend any time at all in the Scriptures, there are a lot more reluctant prophets and leaders than there are people who are pursuing leadership. Actually, those who pursue and cling to leadership (ie. Saul, Herod, etc.) are usually those who should least have it. When God told Moses of the destiny before him, he repeatedly told God why he was NOT the right guy for the job. Maybe that is how you know when it is God, when the calling is so big and overwhelming everybody knows that you can’t do it alone.

God asked Moses what was in his hand. Rick Warren did a great job with this. He explained that in Moses’ hand was a shepherd’s staff. What we are is most often defined by what we “carry around.” In this case the staff defined identity, income and influence. It was essentially the three gifts God gives each of us that allow for some degree of self-understanding. Identity, the staff told of Moses position in the community. Income, lets face it, when we are identified in the community, everybody had a general idea of how much we are worth, at least in the world’s eyes. Influence, position carries with it the ability to influence. The words that keep ringing in my ears are “what is in your hand?” I do not know how to answer that? What unique skills, abilities and talents do I have “in my hands” and how is God calling me to use them? What is it I need to put down to allow God to use?

Lastly, God’s instructions were going to be darned inconvenient and costly. I have some understanding of this. I have never taken a significant raise to change ministry positions. A couple of times I have even moved backwards financially. Where I am now I am moving backwards with astounding consistency. I have not even received enough of a raise in the three years I’ve been here to make up for the rise in fuel costs to get to work. Moses was about to sacrifice stability for insecurity. Sure he had a tough job, but working for Jethro had its advantages. There was food, shelter, a warm bed and a wife to come home to. I can’t even imagine the conversation with his wife when he told her a bush told him to go back to Egypt and get a few hundred thousand people and walk across the desert to a “promised land.” This isn’t the life of the prosperity gospel proponents. This is a life of costly discipleship.

So, where does that leave me? In the desert I’m afraid, trying to figure out what is in my hand and waiting on God’s sense of timing. Every time I think that God is giving me a sign, it turns into a disappointment. We are humans are ‘meaning makers.’ We create meaning even when there is nothing there. Perhaps that is what I have been doing, trying to make meaning and get direction. I guess I’ll just keep wandering.

I must say, I’m a little sheepish about the prospects. I remain:

Consumed by the Call,
Marty Cauley

Gracious God, give me the strength to live in the desert with the sheep and to see the burning bush when you put it in my path. In the name of the One who calls us to follow, Jesus, I pray. Amen.

Profit or Prophet: Measuring Ministry by the Bottom Line

Beginning Dec. 1 where I currently serve we will begin measuring ministry by the bottom line. Everything we do will be weighed on a profit or loss spreadsheet. How often is ministry profitable? How often do people generate profit by raising money for missions or serving youth? Are we simply feeding the consumerist nature of our culture by making ministry another commodity to be bought and sold?

I live to make a difference in people’s life. I know where my heart is, and it is in helping people realize and go after their God-shaped destiny. I love to see the light go on and the passion ignited when somebody realizes the amazing impact each of us can have upon the world. My call is realized when dozens of youth kneel at an altar of worship to declare themselves fully devoted followers of Christ. My call is affirmed when I consult with a congregation and a church awakens to the fact that they exist for something beyond their walls. They exist to serve and save the world. The world around the globe and the world right outside their doors.

In 1992 I left the “for profit” world. I left to follow my heart’s call and serve God in vocational ministry. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are amazingly effective “ministers” in every vocation. There are those who serve God best in auto body shops, in sales, in executive positions and in political office. My calling, however, was to equip those saints to serve. To spend the capital investment of my life pouring into others so that they could do ministry wherever God called them. Essentially I traded “for profit” to be a prophet.

Now I am at the place again. Maybe I had been in denial up until today. Maybe I had not fully realized the direction of the organization, but today as I read a briefing on “rebranding” and saw that my email address would change from a “.org” to a “.com” it struck me that I would be working for a company and not a ministry. That is rather disturbing because what companies do is serve their customers for the primary purpose of making a profit. The profit becomes the goal, the reason they exist, the central factor in all decisions. Microsoft doesn’t measure changed lives and Target doesn’t count professions of faith, they count dollars. These companies even make a selling point out of their contributions back to the community. Most recently Target has been saying, essentially, shop here and by doing so help your community. Another example of commodifying consumerism.

Awareness always generates the need for a decision. Can I sacrifice being prophetic for profit? Can I measure my ministry by the bottom line? I hear the words of Jesus ringing in my ears, “"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” Matthew 6:23-25

Gracious God, who calls us to be in the world but not of the world, guide me in discerning what is profitable and what is prophetic. In the name of the one who gave the ultimate sacrifice, Jesus, I pray. Amen

Painful Worship

I have discovered why the mainline church is in decline. I have made a revolutionary discovery! I have uncovered the problem that, if solved, could reverse the drain upon local church attendance and return them to vitality and effective ministry. The problem is painful worship.

There was a time, even before I was a minister, that I had the philosophy that I didn’t “have to go to church,” I “got to go to church.” That worship was the most exciting and empowering part of my week. To gather with a body of believers who were radically devoted to following Jesus, who sang songs of praise with passion and intensity, who listened intently as the Word was preached with integrity and interest caused my heart to leap. I knew that my life would be challenged, my soul stirred and my eternal perspective restored allowing me to face another week as a disciple. I am afraid that those days are gone.

I have visited literally dozens of churches, mostly United Methodist and almost all mainline. In nearly every one of them worship is simply painful. Either the music is so bad that earplugs should be issued upon entrance or the people so distant and internally focused that it felt as though I was invisible or the preaching so disjointed and disconnected it could not possibly be called a sermon. My most recent experience was to hear a twenty minute (which felt like an eternity) lecture on being prepared for a disaster. That I should have six months of income in my savings account, gallons of water in my basement and lots of canned food on hand in case of emergency. I spent the entire message waiting for it to come back to the scriptural text or relate to living life as a faithful disciple but it didn’t. Richard Lischer of Duke Divinity School always said make sure you know how you are going to end your message, then you will always know where you are going. This preacher (dare I say he was preaching?) just abruptly stopped, no conclusion or challenge, just lurched to a homiletically disconnected ending about like slamming on brakes in the middle of the highway. It is a good thing too because I was just about to fall asleep.

So how do we overcome painful worship. I have a few suggestions that you can take with a grain of salt.

1) Do what you do well. This sounds obvious but at church we insist on doing things we do badly, over and over again. If your music isn’t strong, limit it. If you can’t do children’s messages, then don’t. We all have strengths and weaknesses. We spend way too much time trying to become average at our weaknesses when we should focus on becoming excellent at our strengths.

2) If you preach poorly, preach briefly. How do you know if you don’t preach well? Have somebody you trust will tell you the truth to evaluate you (not your spouse or your mom, they will lie!). We are not all great preachers and that is okay, we all have different pastoral gifts. If preaching is not your primary gift, find ways to make it bearable for your parishioners. Focus on the text, preach the Word clearly and succinctly. The Word will not return void!

3) Do not embarrass guests. I could not believe that the pastoral team wanted my wife and I to raise our hands so everybody would know who the first time guests were, as if they didn’t already. In this small church we had already been visited by both pastors, the president of the United Methodist Men, a representative from United Methodist women and four other random people. It was clear that we were outsiders. Then, from the pulpit during announcements, they wanted us to raise our hands. I am a church person and I don’t like being pointed out, can you imagine what it would feel like for somebody just test driving their faith to be singled out in a group and pointed to? Most people want to blend into a crowd the first time, not be given special attention. Acknowledge the with personal contact not impersonal pointing!

4) Watch the “Metho-speak.” My wife was raised Roman Catholic and still has trouble translating into Methodist language or “Metho-speak.” The bulletins at the churches we have visited were full of it. Women’s groups called “circles,” charge conferences and interior names for committee meetings. If you are going to print it, explain it. If you don’t need to print it, then don’t. Please do not fill up fifteen minutes with self-serving, internal announcements. Nothing turns an outsider off more than the feeling of being an outsider.

We are killing ourselves by unawareness. We are dying the death of oblivion. I do not think fixing these obvious problems will suddenly cause massive United Methodist revival, but I do think they will keep us from scaring away the people who want to learn more about us. Worship should not be painful! Worship is the time when we set aside time to gather with God’s people and enter into God’s presence. It should be a time of awe and inspiration, not aggravation and napping. God forgive me for all of the painful worship services that I may have planned without taking time to consider the eternal consequences that the service might have upon those in attendance. I remain:

Consumed by the Call,

Gracious God, who calls us to gather, give our praise, bring our sacrifice and worship you fully, grant that we who are given charge of your precious children may take seriously their care and devote ourselves to helping them encounter you faithfully and frequently in worship. In the name of the one we worship and adore, Jesus, I pray. Amen.

The Sin of Acceptable Segregation

Acceptance of diversity is a myth. I am coming to believe that when the church says it is “accepting of diversity” what it is really saying is that it is practicing acceptable segregation. As I have been reading Jonathon Kozol I have become increasingly aware of our willingness to practice acceptable segregation. To segregate and silence the voices of those who we do not want to hear. To set aside the lives of the poor, the abused and the addicted and to discount any concern they may present.

I was raised poor. Working poor. Free lunch poor. Turn in bottles for dimes poor. Diversity in my neighborhood wasn’t an option it was a fact of life. You didn’t embrace it, you lived it. People who were different than you, who saw life through different eyes than you lived next door, down the street and around the block. Even though we lived in close proximity, worked in the same places and attended the same schools we parted ways in our relationships. We lived together but we didn’t play together. We worked together but we did not worship together. We practiced acceptable segregation.

Tolerance is un-Christian. Tolerance is the root of acceptable segregation. No where did Jesus instruct us to tolerate one another. Jesus told us to love one another. Love is a conscious, directed act of the will that involves decision and sacrifice. It is wrapped in empathy and centered in respect. Tolerance, on the other hand, is usually wrapped in disdain and centered in mistrust. Tolerance is what leads to acceptable segregation. It allows us to exist together without ever letting our lives touch, much less intersect. Tolerance allows for keeping people in their place, which usually means out of the way and in the background. As a matter of fact the church should be the most intolerant place on earth. It should be intolerant of racism. It should be intolerant of sexism. It should be intolerant of classism. It should be intolerant of injustice, prejudice and paternalism. Tolerance is what allows these things to continue, even to thrive.

So what are we to do? We who strive to be faithful followers of Jesus, what is our response to acceptable segregation? I believe we need to follow the example that Jesus set. First of all we elevate people as creations made in the very image of God. Jesus constantly and consistently elevated people above their social status based upon gender, class or race. Women became heralds, servants became masters and Samaritans became heroes. Secondly we must embrace people as equals. We must realize that their eternal value is exactly the same as our own, regardless of their status, skin color or standing. Jesus died for them just like Jesus died for us. Lastly we must encounter people who are different than us. We have to see them. We are selectively blind. There is somebody in your life, and in my life, who is invisible because they make us uncomfortable. It is time to open our eyes to our acceptable segregation.

I have a few heroes in my life and one of them is Laura Early. Laura refuses to practice acceptable segregation. She elevates people most of us don’t even see, she embraces them with complete, unconditional love and encounters them every day of her life. She weaves her story, the story of a middle class, well educated white women, in with their stories. Stories of impoverished children, invisible minorities and battered persons struggling with addiction. She sees Jesus in everyone she meets, even people like me who sometimes think they have risen above their circumstances.

Gracious God help me to see others like Jesus sees all of us. As divine creations of an ever-loving Creator. Forgive me for the practice of acceptable segregation in my life and guide me to practice a life of love. In the name of the One who made heroes out of Samaritans, Jesus, I pray. Amen.

David vs. Goliath...kinda

So when I heard that the Miracle Theater in Pigeon Forge, Tn. was taking on Kathy Griffin after she insulted most of mainline Christianity the other night on the Emmy's I was surprised. It is not often a business, any business, takes on anything the least bit controversial. Kudos to them for actually taking a stand, especially as an organization that does a Passion Play as its centerpiece.

If you would like to see their HUGE USA Today ad or sign their petition against discrimination against Christians visit http://miracletheater.com/

I remain:

Consumed by the Call,
Marty

On Love & Work

We spend most of our time pursuing our vocation and yet most of our art focuses on love. This is the core revelation I have had today. I have watched a few movies this weekend with my wife, Danelle, and it occurred to me as we watch Becoming Jane how much of our art is about love. It weaves its way into visual arts, plays a significant role on the stage and screen, its melodic vitues and tales of its trial and tribulation fill our IPODS and airways. Even the great stories illustrated by ballet and dance are centered upon the pursuit, acquisition and continuance of love. Yet in our daily lives, how much time do we spend maintaining or nurturing love.

Most of our time is filled by the pursuit of vocation and the acquisition of resources by which we “make a living.” But is making a living the same as making a life. We spend more than two thousand hours a year working. Whether it is sitting behind a desk, shuffling paper or doing back breaking labor, far more of our time is spent working than loving.

Not only does work sap us of time, it drains us of joy. How many meetings have your truly left with a profound sense of joy about what has just occurred? How many days to you rise out of bed and count the moments until you can be at work? Our identity is wrapped up in our position and success at work and yet work is a fickle mistress. One day you feel as though you are on the top of your game, making sacrifice after sacrifice for its pleasure only to discover that she is equally pursuing others. Actually, she prefers others regardless of your sacrifice. You, who have wrapped your identity in your vocation, are then left alone, sitting at your desk wondering why you made these sacrifices to begin with. On the sidelines you see love, sacrificed upon the altar of vocation.

Can you imagine what a relationship would be if it received two thousand hours annually of nurture and care? How much more joy would be in our lives should we devote more time to love than to vocation? To relationships that will survive the fickle hand of vocational downsizing and re-alignment. After suffering from yet another vocational disappointment I am beginning to think that my life would be better invested in love and in work.

Problems or Heroic Opportunities

I hate problems. I grow tired of solving problems. I especially hate other peoples problems that become my problems. But here is what I know about problems, they are usually heroic opportunities. If you help somebody solve a problem, if you create solutions where there don’t seem to be any or find ways around obstacles you become a hero. Now you are not a hero in the Supeman understanding of heroes, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but to the person who was struggling you become a hero. A hero is defined as, “a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act.” It is, therefore, a matter of perception. Some people see problems as obstacles, others as heroic opportunities. Some see them as a chance to pass the buck or avoid work or find an easy way out, others as a chance to “make some one’s day” or improve the lives of others, even if for only a short time.

My friend Tawana looks for heroic opportunities. When a problem lands in her lap, she marshals her resources, makes phone calls and does everything within her power, and sometimes beyond her power, to solve the problem. Some of the problems may be small, like helping a youth worker find a computer to use to check email from home or making sure their room has extra towels, but other problems can be much more serious. Like the time when one of our speakers needed a glucometer to check their blood sugar because they were diabetic or when a staff member was struggling with problems at home. In either situation she saw their problem as her problem and found ways around obstacles to find solutions.

I know another person, Jim Mousemount we will call him (not his real name) whose primary talent if finding problems and complaining about his problems. Then, instead of finding solutions, he attempts to pass the buck. He doesn’t see a problem as a heroic opportunity as much as a chance to fall short and make excuses. “We don’t have enough money.” “We don’t have enough staff.” He has a “we don’t” attitude and it infects everybody he comes into contact with. What is particularly aggravating is when the organization he works for internal problems become problems for their clients. When, instead of finding creative solutions, he attempts to pass his problem along to the person who is paying him to solve the problem. This, my friends, IS a problem!

I have this ridiculous notion that a client’s problem should be our problem and that our internal problems should NEVER be the client’s problem. That the reason they come to us is to help them find solutions and to provide them with answers to their needs. and their problems If we fail to be creators of solutions then we will have a problem, since then our clients/customers will find another place to solve their problems.

So, where does that leave us? It leaves us in positions to become heroes. I demands that we find creative solutions, explore unheard of ideas and open the box of our minds to possibilities that have never been tried before. Like I said earlier, I hate problems, but I love heroic opportunities.

Missing Church

On Saturday I visited St. Lukes United Methodist Church, Lubbock, Texas. I stood in the sanctuary. I stood in the sanctuary, like many other sanctuaries built in the 1970’s with is wooden curved pews and comfortable cushions, its rich new carpet and hardwood altar. It smelled clean, like polished wood and candles and had the feel of three decades of prayer soaked into its beams. There was a giant cross and a choir loft off to one side that seems to be waiting for the resonating sound of the baby grand piano to strike a worshipful chord. The rich, dark wood pulpit with etched cross stood on the left with the communion table centered against the wall under the cross. I could not bring myself to climb the six or seven steps up to the chancel area and look out over the congregational seating feeling that its pull may overwhelm me. I sat in the third row and just listened to the stillness of the worship space that would fill with worshippers less than twenty four hours from then. I sat there a few moments until I saw something drop upon the legs of my slacks and realized it was tears from my eyes. Then I felt the hot tears streaming down my face as I sat there waiting upon my host to do some last minute tasks to prepare to lead music the following morning. I got up and went out into the foyer to insure that he did not see me in such a state. I stood there looking out the front door at the weathered parking lot and tried to get myself back together.

I sat down this morning and tried to figure out why I had that response to being in a church. I have been in dozens of churches in the past three years since I left the pulpit to work at Lake Junaluska. There was something familiar about the place, something about the way it looked and smelled that triggered some powerful pastoral memories. Whether it was the look of Trinity UMC in New Bern or how it smelled like the sanctuary at Trinity UMC in Fayetteville or just how it felt to be in a church that really felt like a church again? I am not sure. So, I made a list of what I miss, and don’t miss about pasturing a local church.

Things I don’t miss:
• Contentious church members.
• Endless meetings.
• Charge conference forms.
• Colleagues with a competitive mindset about ministry, always comparing worship attendance and offering numbers.
• Proofreading bulletins.
• Vacation interruptions.
• Budget meetings.
• Tax headaches.
• Hospital visits at 2 a.m.
• Temperamental music leaders and staff conflict.

Things I miss:
• Knee hugs from children on Sunday.
• The smell of fresh flowers in the sanctuary.
• The taste of communion bread soaked in grape juice.
• Rehearsing and rewriting my sermon in an empty sanctuary on Friday or Saturday afternoons.
• Doing funerals for the saints of the church.
• The smell of infants on the morning of their baptism.
• The hugs of new members who found a church that they can feel loved and accepted in.
• Reading Christmas stories to pajama clad children before Christmas Eve worship.
• Good Friday worship ending in darkness and bolting the door.
• Weekly Eucharist and holding the loaf up and breaking it.
• The rhythm of the church year.
• The pressure to write a better sermon this week than last week, fifty-two times a year.
• Writing sermons in coffee houses and asking myself at the end of all the work, “so what?”

My call is here, now. So here I will serve until Christ leads me to another place. Until then I remain:

Consumed by the Call,
Marty

God, who makes the rough path smooth, and the winding path straight, grant me the ability to be fully present in the ministry I am living out right now. Show me what you would have me to do and be and keep me from vain ambition or change for the sake of change. Light my path with the light of the One who knows the way, Jesus. In whose name I pray. Amen.

Highest and Best Calling

Arlene Hewitt sat in her office one particularly reflective, dreary afternoon and said, “So I often wonder, is this the highest and best calling for this time in my life?” We had been discussing our work and our institutional frustration, irritation with bureaucracy and just the vocational angst that often accompanies those in ministry. If she had taken out a sock, put a brick in it and hit me in the head it would have been no less jarring. That was an incredible question. The question is far deeper than it initially seems.

First, is what I am doing my highest and best calling? Is it the most God-honoring thing I can be doing (highest) and is it the most effective use of my time (best)? What would the highest calling look like? Would it be constantly certain that I was in the presence of God in all that I do?

My highest calling, it would seem, would be actions that lead to eternal results. I mean, my job is to engage youth and young adults in matters related to their spiritual formation facilitate significant faith decisions and put them on the road to being fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. That seems pretty significant, even if I rarely get to actually see the fruits of my labor. I have stacks of commitment cards from last summer indicating that serious decisions were made, yet the question remains, is this the highest calling for my life? Is this the vocation that resonates with my heart song?

Next, is it my best calling? Am I doing what I can do most effectively to yield eternal results? Does ordering two-thousand Hawaiian leis count as a spiritual venture? Am I playing to my strengths and fully engaging my spiritual gifts? A lot of what I do does seem counter-intuitive to my gifts. I spend a lot of time in meetings and doing administrative tasks which are certainly not life-giving for me. Additionally, I spend precious little time communicating and teaching. Being one whose primary joy of the local church was the time I spent leading Bible study or preaching each week, it seems that I don’t often get to do what I used to love to do. Actually, I have even begun to doubt my abilities in these areas, partially from being out of practice I am certain, and also due to simple exhaustion. Is this my best calling?

The other part of the question is just as impactful as the first. When she said “for this time in my life,” it called into account our mortality. How often do I live my life certain of tomorrow? I’m not being morbid but I do have to realize that at 42 I am more than half done with the active, functional time of my life. Let’s say I make it to mandatory retirement for the United Methodist Church, 72. I essentially have only thirty years to make whatever mark upon this world I will make. When you are sixteen, thirty years seems like a lifetime. When you are 42 it looks significantly shorter.

There are books to read and, maybe, books to write. There are sunrises to see break through the dark of night and reflect upon God’s continual testimony of hope. There is laughter to share and tears to shed. So, is this the highest and best calling for my life right now? I honestly don’t know. I do know that it is what I am called to do at this moment and I will continue to honor that calling until God shed light upon the next path I am to travel because I continue to struggle and remain:

Consumed by the Call,

Marty

Gracious God, lead me in Your highest and best calling for my life for this time in my life, in the name of the One who lived that out with every breath, Jesus, I pray. Amen

Vocational Redemption

What is the most important result of your work? At the end of the day, week, month or year, if you have accomplished X then you will know that all of the time and effort has been worth the sacrifice. Is it a positive number at the bottom of the profit and loss statement? Is that the most important thing? Is it the lives that have been improved by your product, service, church or ministry? Is it the building of a building or the care of the poor? What is the most important result of your work?

You don’t know do you? Most of us don’t. We are seldom given clear direction and information about what we should consider vital and essential to our daily tasks. That is highly frustrating, especially for those of us Type A personalities that like clear objectives and goals. We spend nearly 2,000 hours a year (more for us work-a-holics) at our vocation without clear institutional priorities. Our supervisors try to give us “pep talks” and motivate us but their objectives are ambiguous. Yes profit is important, but so is quality and service. Of course we want you to make other’s lives better and serve the poor, but only if a profit can be generated in the process. Make disciples and make money, yeah, that’s your objective. We have carefully crafted mission statements, purpose statements, and value statements. We then have statements about our statements. Definitions about the words in our statements, reformatted vision statements. Most of these statements in placed carefully on the cover of a three ring binder or hanging on the wall over the entrance or water fountain and promptly forgotten. Then we go back to work and try to please everyone, customers, supervisors, CEOs and board members, never quite sure who is the most important master because it changes by the day.

Didn’t Jesus say something about not being able to serve two masters? Don’t I recall something about you will love the one and hate the other? He didn’t define which was the “right one” and which was the “wrong one,” just that one will resonate with your heart song and the other will annoy you and cause you heartburn.

So what is the answer? If we aren’t going to get a divine pronouncement from above about what is vital and essential, what do we do? There are a few things we can do to help us keep the main thing, the main thing.

• Focus on your passionate strengths: Marcus Buckingham does a great job teaching people to play to their strengths. He advises us that we should spend 50-80% of our day doing things that “strengthen us.” We should do things that we love, that resonate with our heart song, that are the reason you took the job in the first place. Now very few people can spend all of their time playing to their strengths, as he says, that’s why they call it work. But if we can spend some significant time each day doing things, activities, tasks and building relationships that we enjoy and are passionate about, it makes the other stuff bearable.

• Define what is important to you: This is key. If nothing you do during your daily existence really seems important and vital to you, then you either need to reformat your vocation or change it. You can starve your soul to death by simply doing things that drain it and empty it day after day. If it doesn’t matter then why is it being done? The days I feel best when I return home are the days when I feel like I have accomplished something important. It might just be one thing, one phone call, one contact, one task, but that one thing was important to me and it puts the rest of the day in perspective. On the contrary, on the days when I go home without feeling like anything I did mattered, like I just went through the motions and filled the seat behind my desk, then I feel worthless.

• Plan your day: You need to know your rhythms. Are you a morning person? Then do what you love at the time you are best, save the email and mundane tasks for your least productive time of the day. I am freshest and most productive in the morning. That is when I need to do things that require my utmost attention. I go into a slump around 2 pm. That is when I should answer mundane email, go through the mail and do things I dread. Why waste my optimal time doing the most dreaded tasks. But that is exactly what we do isn’t it? We go into work, if we are morning people, full of caffeine and energy for the day and then get bogged down with email and busy work, forgetting to utilize our best hours of our most enjoyed tasks. Master your day, make a plan.

So, how do I deal with lack of real, institutional priorities? I have to set personal priorities and work from there. Working from my strengths, knowing what is important to me personally and making an action plan will redeem the time and allow me to deal with the frustration of the lack of true institutional priorities. So my goals will be:
• To spend the first hour at my desk writing and reflecting every day.
• Begin defining the task that is most important for me to do that feeds me each day.
• Spend fifteen minutes each day to maximize the important and minimize the mundane.

How about you?

Consumed by the Call,
Marty
Gracious God, who grants me 1,440 minutes each and every day, help me to live in the awareness that You should define what is most important in my day and help me live in the shadow of your will. In the name of the One who lived every day on purpose, Jesus the Christ, I pray. Amen